A few years back, I thought even fainthearted Western liberals might draw the line at "FGM." After all, it’s a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: Its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, many of us hapless Western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don’t demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest.

This is a natural extension of the same reasoning applied in other settings: needle exchanges, condom distribution, methadone, subsidising illegitimacy. It is called a harm-reduction strategy, and I am not entirely opposed to it. The first problem with it, however, is that advocates consistently underestimate the negative outcomes. They try to paint it as a guaranteed improvement of an already miserable situation. But there are always unintended consequences.

Campaign Finance Reform would be a good example of a harm-reduction strategy gone awry.

Secondly, look at the settings that this is consistently not applied to: concealed carry to reduce violence, school vouchers, rights for terrorists. On those matters, we must maintain an ideological purity.

> This is a natural extension of the same reasoning applied in other settings: needle exchanges, condom distribution, methadone, subsidising illegitimacy. It is called a harm-reduction strategy, and I am not entirely opposed to it.

AVI, I disagree. The things you describe are different in that:

a) They are people screwing up only themselves (except the illegitimacy issue)

b) They relate to self-imposed behavioral limits which society can only partly encourage (and should be thus limited in their approach towards), not enforce.

I will grant you there is a fine line between enabling and reducing harm, and I, too, advocate some care in the latter while avoiding the former.

This is one person harming another, however. Worse -- it's harming a helpless innocent who has no power to resist.

This is "Well, these people took their kids to country 'x' where they could kill them with impunity as religious sacrifices", so, well, what the hell, "let's give them bullets to just do the job with here".

Hey, they're going to do it anyway... *right*?

It's not just a difference in degree with those situations you describe -- it's a difference in kind.

And that is why the "harm reduction strategy" argument fails, and fails badly.

You want a harm reduction strategy?

Require a gyno exam for any children within the correct age range prior to issuing an exit visa for the minor. And a gyno exam on return. Any evidence of change suggesting mutilation leads to prosecution of the parent for child endangerment, abuse, or something of the kind... Gynos will be provided at government expense if desired.

I dunno what, if any, restrictions there are on gyno exams for young girls in Islam. I'd assume that a female is allowed to perform such actions, so it can be allowed that the gyno be female.

THAT would be a "harm reduction strategy" that actually reduced the harm.